Fade to Play

I remember seeing an ESPN commercial in which the lights were going out in the ESPN office during a broadcast. Dan Patrick goes downstairs to the broiler room to investigate. He finds Lance Armstrong taking a break from his bike. Lance apologies and starts biking again as electricity runs through the building again.

I was reminded of this commercial today after adding Daily Wireless to my bloglines. A 16 year old boy had combined his hampster’s power on the exercise wheel to charge his mobile phone.

“Every two minutes Elvis spends on his wheel gives me about thirty minutes talk time on my phone.”

The teenage inventor was given a C for his project and has been awarded a D overall for the course.

Daily Wireless discusses also how a bicycle-powered charger could be an alternative to electricity as mobile phone usage increases in Africa.

Relevance: I have read a number of stories about the influence of mobile technology in Africa. Local solutions will be needed to address issues such as electricity for battery charging that we take for granted here.

I have made the trip to the grocery store to buy X only to arrive back home and remember that I had forgot to buy X. What I needed was some cue or reminder to jog my memory. The geominder could be an option.

When arriving at a marked location, Geominder can play an alarm and display a stored text note or a voice note previously associated to that location.

Using Geominder is as simple as 1,2,3:

1. Teach Geominder about your locations.
2. Create reminders for those locations as needed.
3. When arriving at a marked location, Geominder will notify you.

Geominder uses mobile network’s cell id information and doesn’t require an extra GPS device. Mobile Network cell id information is usually suited for most common day-to-day uses (for example: home - office - shopping). No mobile operator fees are involved in using Geominder.

found via Clara Leung’s blog

Relevance: I think I would want one of these to tell me when I am about to leave the house without my keys. Rather than focus on what I need to get, I would like to focus on what I do not have (e.g. glasses, keys, wallet) before leaving home/office/university.

Technorati tags: Mobile , Memory, Locative

This article from the International Herald Tribute discusses how Denver is shutting down its centralised, high-tech baggage system that it build 10 years ago.

But the handoff in baggage handling also illuminates how much has changed in the years since Denver’s grand, if not grandiose, dream was first hatched in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Back then, the big mainframe doing it all from command central was the model of high technology. Today the very idea sounds like a quaint Cold War-era relic, engineers say, as decentralization and mobile computing technology have taken over just about everything.

Workers with hand-held scanners, checking baggage tag bar codes at every juncture of transit, will give managers far better information and control than could have been imagined back then, United officials said.

Relevance: An example on how technology is changing. Mobile devices using real people rather than an all-knowing central, computer system.

Technorati tags: technology, airport, mobile

I am so excited to be attending ECSCW. I had heard amazing things about Bill Gaver and now I read that he will be the closing keynote speaker.

Listen to the title: All W and No P Makes CSCW a Dull Field: Supporting Ludic Collaboration
Wow. I am quite interested in learning more about Play especially as it relates to CSCW.

Relevance: I am interested in hearing examples where workplaces are incorporating play into their every practices. How does play influence one’s sense of being part of a team when everyone is co-located vs. distributed team-members?

Technorati tags: cscw, conference, Play

Today I downloaded the papers for the ECSCW games workshop. It was cool to read that Sylvie, a fellow participant/Canadian did the same thing today as well.
Sylvie wrote about the Other Players conference on multiplayer games that took place in Denmark. The proceedings are online. It is the same university with TL Taylor is who I knew from meeting her in the Palace. She now does digital gaming research.

Relevance: From attending DiGRA 2005 here, I learnt that studies conducted in online digital spaces can help my understanding of games within the physical world

Technorati tags: conference, games

Design Engaged is a three-day, invitation-only event for leaders in the design industry. Participants come together to discuss ideas in progress and participate in activities that exercise design thinking.

The most interesting parts of conferences seem inevitably to happen during its coffee breaks, in its hallways, or over dinner afterwards. The people you most want to meet you might only glimpse onstage during their 20 minute talk. Most conferences are designed from the top down, and don’t allow any real interaction. Design Engaged is a three-day attempt to recognize and use the patterns that let people enjoy working together. To be more playful, collaborative, and informal, and less polished, final, and remote than traditional conferences.

* Day 1 will consist of presentations by participants
* During part of Day 2, participants leave the conference space and spend time in small groups.
* Day 3 will be a day-long brainstorming session in response to a design brief or problem defined by the group

WHERE

The offices of Spreeblick in Berlin, Germany.

WHEN

11,12,13 November 2005 (Friday - Sunday)

Relevance: Looks pretty cool if you can snag an invite.

Technorati tags: design, cfp

I now have google talk. You can read the press release here.

They say talk is cheap. Google thinks it should be free. Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free-anytime, anywhere in the world. Google Talk offers you:

* Choice: Get in touch how and when you want to-over email, IM or a call

* Quality: Talk through your computer but hear your friends as if they were in the same room

* Convenience: Your Gmail contacts are pre-loaded into Google Talk so inviting or talking to your friends is just a click away

Google Talk is in beta and requires a Gmail username and password.

I would like to be able to integrate it with trillian where I store my different IM and ICQ accounts. In addition I wonder how this will affect skype?

[update]: Check out this post on apple-X.net about what a google IM would look like (from August 2004). It is a little prophetic in discussing what google would need and what it actually has now. I agree that there needs to be a way to transfer files via google talk and be able to include a picture in your tag name.

It probably won’t happen, but what if it did? If it was easy enough to use, provided a convenient way to transition from AIM, and offered more useful features than AIM’s, then really, who WOULDN’T start using it after a while?

An important feature of Joogle would have to be contact list portability and file transfer behind NAT, neither of which Jabber can really provide. Thus, Google could implement such features in their own client, which would also display a text ad in the contact list.
And it would work, even if users could choose to use a different Jabber client that didn’t display an ad and was even more customisable, for the same reason more AIM users don’t use Gaim.

What else would it need? Audio chats are important in modern IMing, so this is a must.

Relevance: Interested in seeing how this new IM tool will integrate into the social and collaborative tools I presently use

Technorati tags: im, google

Rob Hof of Business Week is looking for people to email him for their stories and rational behind using the Web.

Want to tell the story of your life on the Web? I’d love to hear it. Why? In researching the best sites and services on the Web for an upcoming feature, I’m realizing that there’s no better way to find out what’s the best than to see how people really use this stuff in their everyday lives. I want to know what sticks (and frankly, what sucks).

OK, I know if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably somewhere out on the leading edge, maybe even bleeding a bit. But that’s what I’m looking for–people who can’t live without the Internet, or for whom it’s so essential that they even don’t think about “getting on the Internet.” If it’s not too much trouble, email me here with a sense of how you live on the Web. With your permission, I’ll share your experiences on the blog, and I think all of us will benefit from your insights. Thanks!

Relevance: I’m interested in hearing about how the internet has become an integral part of people’s lives? Having internet access at home seems as expected as having electricity.

Technorati tags: internet, web

I like paper and like to write down my thoughts regarding my thesis and related topics. However, I need to become more consistent in my writing. I learnt about the importance of carrying a notepad and writing everything down when I read Losing my Virginity which is the audiobiography by Richard Branson. He carries around a small notepad to write anything down he deems important.

Professional-Lurker today comments about the benefit of record keeping for PhD students and he she provides tips for students which are useful for the annual progress reports. He She also recommends some useful organisational tools to use.

Finally if you set your system, any system, up early it is much easier. First you have fewer things to track so you can more easily train yourself to work the process. Second it will be easier to tweak the system as you find better ways to make it all work for you.

Becoming organised during my Masters will make the transition to a PhD less painful.

[update] Apologies to Lois of Professional-Lurker. The gender has been corrected.

Relevance: Useful tips to make graduate students better organised.

Technorati tags: student, productivity

I remember playing Active Worlds, a 3D online virtual environment, when bots were introduced. It was a novel and exciting time in-world as people were able to control their bots to follow others around or provide pre-programmed responses to questions.

This article from Newscientist.com illustrates how actions within virtual space continue to have consequences within the physical world as the boundaries between the real and the virtual become more translucent.

via THE PRESENCE-L LISTSERV

Relevance: Real world crime occurs in vitual space independent of whether the medium is visual or textual. These online spaces cannot be perceived as virtual edens without sanctions existing for undesirable behaviour. Games and digital spaces need to anticipate the potential of deviant behaviour and provide safeguards.

Technorati tags: mmorpg, presence, game